


A Stolen Skin

by Mister_Fox



Series: beware beware the yellow door, the one that wasn't there before [1]
Category: Bleach, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Possibly Unreliable Narrator, Statement, Supernatural Elements, a little bit, implied Urahara Kisuke/Kurotsuchi Mayuri/Kurosaki Ichigo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:08:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24089404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mister_Fox/pseuds/Mister_Fox
Summary: Case number: 2015012804. Statement of Kurotsuchi Mayuri, regarding-]The strange, endless basement levels under my workplace, that I discovered in November of 2014, and the skins stolen from the morgue shortly afterwards.[Original statement given April 28th 2015. Audio recording witnessed by Kurosaki Ichigo, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London branch.Statement begins.]
Relationships: Kurosaki Ichigo & Kurotsuchi Mayuri
Series: beware beware the yellow door, the one that wasn't there before [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1737916
Comments: 9
Kudos: 28





	A Stolen Skin

[ _Okay, I hope it’s on. Thank you for dropping off the files, we’ve managed to complete follow-up on some older cases thanks to them. I know it’s technically really against the rules of your job, but-_ ]

They don’t particularly want to keep records or file of such cases where I work. No one is… interested in knowing more, shall we say.

[ _Ah, right, in that case._

 _Case number: 2015012804. Statement of Kurotsuchi Mayuri, regarding-_ ]

The strange, endless basement levels under my workplace, that I discovered in November of 2014, and the skins stolen from the morgue shortly afterwards.

[ _Original statement given April 28th 2015. Audio recording witnessed by Kurosaki Ichigo, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London branch._

 _Statement begins._ ]

I am certain that the cause- that the reason I found that strange basement under my workplace was the body that was brought in the day before. I can’t see how, but- there was nothing else that changed, nothing else that was genuinely _different._

I was not assigned to the autopsy or the investigation itself- that was my colleague, who, I believe, has made his own statement since.

For some context: On the eight of November, a body was brought in, discovered by the police in the late afternoon thanks to an anonymous tip. It was in a warehouse near the Thames, but there was sufficient evidence to indicate that the murder must have happened elsewhere, sometime in the morning. The body was processed, then placed in the morgue while the usual methods of identification were attempted.

It was not a weird case. Not the sort of _weird_ that gets people to sign forms, and then keep being shunted to weird cases in the future.

Certainly, there was mutilation, because you get all sorts of creative and gruesome murderers, but while it might not be common to get a body branded multiple times over with a stylised closed eye, it’s not the sort of weird that you have to sign twenty forms about and never talk of again. Even the burned and melted skin that looked like it had run like wax was- well, not _quite_ weird enough to cut it, not compared to some of the stuff we have to examine sometimes. Or dispose of.

You have to understand, it wasn’t weird enough to get anyone- worried. It wasn’t weird enough that I should have been paying special attention to things, that I should have _known_ to pay special attention, that I should have been _careful._

There was _nothing_ to indicate that significant events were about to occur.

The day after the body arrived, my own shift was meant to start quite early. I had quite the restless night, and did not manage to get any rest, and by very early morning, I had given up entirely, and decided to go in early to work, perhaps to have a look at our apparent _cult victim_ , as the mutilated body had been nicknamed.

I was certain it was just the lack of sleep, at the time. There couldn’t _be_ an endless basement under our building. There couldn’t be a space that ran on for so long, in a building I thought I knew so well, there couldn’t be place so confusing and empty and constantly turning to the left with geometry that just did not _work_ , where every time you turned around corridors that should have led right just led left instead. It all had to be the product of a very tired mind, possibly even a _dream,_ it could not have been _real_ , there was no way it could have been _real_.

I thought I must have entered through the wrong door, must have pressed the lift button to go down instead of up, must have automatically walked out and walked through enough twists and turns without noticing how oddly empty everything was that I didn’t notice I had ended up in the basement until _too late_.

I was… lost. I did not feel too concerned about it, as I have rarely been in the basement- perhaps it was just… a section I could not recognise. A part I had not observed before. I was lost, but I was aware that all locations have a limit on how large they are, so I would not be lost forever - either I would run into someone or find a way out by myself, so I was not _alarmed_ as I wandered around. It did not occur to me to be alarmed. Not at first.

It was as I walked around that it occured to me how odd this basement was. Some of the rooms looked like they were meant to house patients, not store equipment, and I was certain I’d passed stations and open areas and even a break room- but I knew it was not an upper level, it had to have been a basement, so it was utterly nonsensical for there to be patient rooms here.

That was when I noticed that some of the rooms had mannequins inside them. I had thought they were people at first, when I saw them through windows while quickly walking through - but they were not moving. They were not alive. Merely mannequins with empty, glassy eyes.

It was... the _strangest_ thing, looking back on it, but I was tired and sleep-deprived, and I am unfortunately prone to bouts of dissociation at times, and assumed that was merely a combination of all those things, somehow, that there was no other rational explanation for an un-ending basement level full of mannequins imitating doctors and patients.

It had to have been it, I told myself, and deliberately ignored the fact that when I tried to retrace my footsteps, not a single one of the turns I could make led right, despite my only taking left turns while walking the corridors.

I noticed time passing as I walked, and- I did not want to be late, but I was not interested in feeling anxious about my punctuality, and avoided looking at my watch to find out how _long_ it was taking to leave the corridors.

It would take me as long as it would, and there was little I could do to change that, and staring at the time and seeing what looked like hours pass by was not helping me.

Eventually, I… walked out.

Looking at my watch, I saw that I was very nearly _late_ to sign in, so I went to work, and put my _morning_ walk out of my mind.

Busy as I was, I did notice that that day, it always seemed to take people longer than usual to get to places they needed to go, that everyone seemed to keep getting lost, especially anyone that needed to go down to the basement.

Akon was one of them. He is - was - a lab technician. Quiet, hard-working. I did not know him well as a person, but I do enjoy working with him. Did enjoy.

What little I knew of his personal life and interests... he was always interested in taxidermy, I think. Models. Human bodies. But that’s the sort of thing that’s normal, here, that’s not the sort of thing that stood out, not to anyone, not here. It wasn’t unusual. I didn’t think it was _weird_.

He smoked, I knew that too, because he often went out on breaks to do it. It barely covered the smell of formaldehyde on him - always, _always_ he smelled of formaldehyde. I suppose that’s just where he worked, and goodness knows my own partner complains - complained - that I smell like chemicals, but… still. He always smelled so much of it, the smell clinging to his clothes, his ever-present gloves and scarf. The smoke almost covered it, though, especially when we were outside, because outside? He never stopped smoking.

I thought he was freaked out, when I saw him come back far too late from a break, eyes wild. I thought it was just the weirdness that got to him. When I asked Akon about what he saw- he also said the place was full of those figures, posed as patients and nurses. Not plastic mannequins, however - wax. Wax models. And he said they looked… I thought he meant unsettling, at the time. But the word he actually used was _incomplete_.

I had the next day off, and did not go in to do anything. The day after that- was when the blackout happened.

In the morning, at ten, for about five minutes, all the lights and security cameras in our part of the hospital went out.

Everyone scrambled about, there was some chaos, of course, and then the lights went on.

And… a short while after that, one of my coworkers went into the morgue, to check on something on one of the bodies. And discovered that every body in the morgue was missing its skin.

Not removed strips, not tore bits off. Every single body in the morgue has the skin completely and entirely removed, leaving everything underneath it exactly as it should have been had the skin still been there, as though someone just peeled the bodies like clementines within a handful of minutes- and then removed them from the premises without being noticed by so much a single person.

Naturally, we called the police, which is when the whole case officially became _weird_. It took a while for them to get here- I assume they don’t have that many _weirdness_ experts in every district.

We spent a day being interviewed while everything was dusted for fingerprints, and other forensic scientists were called in as none of us were allowed to be there, in case one of us would tamper with the evidence.

That was when Akon’s absence was noted.

He’d been absent - apparently taken a sick leave - the day before. So I suppose no one thought of interviewing him about the bodies, not on the first day, not when he wasn’t supposed to be in on the day anyway. He wasn’t _missing_ , no one was _looking_ for him.

You have to understand, I didn’t mean to _find_ _him_. I hadn’t gone looking. _I hadn’t gone looking_. I didn’t _mean_ to get lost again, I didn’t want to be in those corridors _again_.

I got to work early the next day again, and… I just don’t know. I _don’t_ _know_ how I ended up in the basement again, no matter how many times I go over it in my head, no matter how irrational I allow my explanation to get, I do not know at what part between approaching the hospital and being in the basement I ended up there, no matter how much I try to remember I can’t, it _hurts_ , but I _know_ I made sure to take the right doors. I am _certain_ they were the right doors, I was doing my best to avoid the too-large basement with the strange mannequins, I was just going to _work._

But I ended up in the basement, again.

I was trying not to look at the mannequins, this time, I was trying to walk away, get _out_ , but I walked too close and- the mannequins had skin. I think, if it had been _bloody_ _scraps_ of it, stretched or glued, or stitched, it might have been better, it would have made more sense, it would have been horrible and gruesome but it would have _made sense._ This skin was stretched neatly over the bodies, with only the faintest seams, like it was _their skin_ , just scarred.

I’d have run, but there was nowhere to run _to_ , I knew it from last time, I didn’t think it would matter if I ran or walked, not when last time running did nothing, _nothing_ , so yes, I just walked, along the corridors with the mannequins that wore _skin_ stolen from the morgue the day before.

Until I found the room.

Akon was there. I saw him through an open door. It must have been him. I don’t know who else it could have been. It- it was him they found later, after all. Not someone else. There were no traces of other people. _None_. As far the police could tell from the one camera they found, the only people that entered or left that corridor over the previous four days were me and him.

But nothing about the person in there looked like Akon to me.

Piles of skin were laid out nearby, and he was sitting there, with a thread and needle, and I watched him- what’s the antonym for skinning something? Covering doesn’t feel like the right word for what was being done to that wax figure, not when the skin was being… attached to the body like that.

I could hear him, whispering something about ‘practicing to get the skin right for the lead dancer’. That it was ‘The most important one, that it can’t be messed up. That it needed some practice, first, that he hadn’t done this before, and why were they calling on him and not someone else?’. I don’t know what that could mean. I don’t want to _think_ about what that could mean.

That was- when I realised there was someone else there, in the room, in a dimly lit corner.

They looked… tall. Their hands too big, their nails too long, their fingers too… I did not get a good look, as those hands reached for me, as I _ran_.

I ran so _long_ , through the corridors that got emptier, ran so far that there were no more mannequins, just off-white corridors with stale air, corridors that had no right turns, where I would go left, always to the left, as I could hear the thing chasing me, horrible _laughter_ following me all the way.

_[I wonder… Szayel?]_

I don’t remember how I got out. I just suddenly found myself in the hospital building proper, _ranting_ to the police. I must have been a dreadful sight, exhausted and winded and running for- it felt like I ran for hours, maybe _days_ , as I despaired of finding a way out. I just wanted to go home, go home and hopefully see my partner again, finally free enough from work to visit me, I wanted to go home and never _leave_.

They found no endless rooms, of course, no dozens of mannequins - they just found one small room, with a pile of wax figures in it, dressed in the skins stolen from the morgue. Except for two skins. The unblemished skin of a man around Akon’s height, who died of cardiac arrest a while prior. And the skin of the most recent murder victim. Those one, they didn’t find.

The police… found Akon. Or a part of him. They kept asking me if I had seen where the... _rest_ of him had gone, where the _body_ was. Or if I knew where the skins were.

I couldn’t tell them anything. I don’t think I needed to. I think we all realised what the unblemished skin got used for, anyway.

I’ve been so very careful about the doors I walk through, since. And I avoid walking in to work alone.

[ _What about the body?_ ]

They identified the murder victim a little later. It was my partner, who was also coincidentally the former Archivist of this place.

Right. Is this enough information for a statement?

[ _Uh- Yeah, yeah, thanks._ ]

Have you... come across things like this before? Do you know what... I saw?

[ _There's... I guess there's some things that are like that? I can send you a list of statements later. There's... been some people with skin that didn't look right, I guess, and some statements about large buildings and corridors, though I think the slaughterhouse one isn't... the same as what you encountered._ ]

Well. No need to bother with that. I'd rather not lose any more sleep, if it's all the same to you.

[ _Okay. Um.We have a break room upstairs - I guess you’d know that, I suppose, since you’ve been here before. If you need some tea, and wanted to stay a while, I could come up once I finish-_ ]

It's... pretty late. I think I will be going now - Kisuke's with me, I'm taking him right now. Maybe some other date for a _date_?

[Urgh. _Did Yoruichi suggest that pun? Anyway, yeah. If we find- anything important, I'll get in touch. Or tell you next time you drop by with more files, I guess? See you around, Mayuri. Say hello to Kisuke._ ]

_Sound of door opening and starting to close._

[ _Hey, wait, that’s not the door to- Shit, get back, get BACK HERE,_ RUN BEFORE IT CLOSES-]

_Audio is distorted._

[ **I’m afraid that’s the last you’ll be seeing of him, Archivist.]**

[ _Give him BACK, Szayel, or whatever your name_ really _is._ ]

[ **But why would I do _that_? He’s far too entertaining. And with your help, I could finally track him down again, and I am _not_ letting him slip away _this_ time. See you around, Archivist.]**

[ _I- get back here! And he’s gone. Shit, what am I going to say to-_ shit.]

[ _I will find a way to get him back._ ]

[ _Statement ends._ ]

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a link to [Cywscross' UraIchi Discord Server](https://discordapp.com/invite/ADFnKTZ#_=_)!


End file.
